The Coach, Clerkenwell, EC1

Here is “The Coach” on Ray Street in Clerkenwell.

I sketched this after I had sketched “Gunmakers” in nearby Eyre Street Hill. Above the pub sign is a model, just visible on the right of my drawing.

The model is a gun carriage. I wondered what the connection was to The Coach, and if there was any connection to Gunmakers on Eyre Street Hill. But no, it is the symbol of The Cannon Brewery. This brewery was founded 1720, in nearby St John Street. It was acquired by Taylor Walker in 1930. I have this information from http://breweryhistory.com. So that explains the cannon.

At the top of the pub, the medallion names the pub as “The Coach and Horses” in white relief work.

The pub website says: “The Coach was established in 1790, and has been at the heart of the lively Clerkenwell community for generations.”

British History Online describes a pub called The Cock Inn, which was part of a sale in 1695:

At the time of the sale [1695], the land was mostly taken up by two fields of pasture: Gardiner’s Field to the north and the larger Sir John Oldcastle’s Field to the south. There was a cluster of buildings and a large rubbish dump or laystall in the south-eastern corner, in the area of Hockley-in-the-Hole. Chief of these buildings was the Cock inn, the forerunner of the present-day Coach and Horses in Ray Street.

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol47/pp22-51

The current building dates from 1897 according to this source:

All the eighteenth-century public houses in the area have been rebuilt or have disappeared entirely. The Apple Tree in Mount Pleasant was rebuilt in the 1870s, and the Coach and Horses in Ray Street in 1897

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol47/pp22-51

So it looks as though the pub was there already in 1695 as the Cock Inn, was established as The Coach and Horses in 1790 (according to the pub website) and rebuilt in 1897. It was renamed The Coach in 2018.

Having closed on 31st July 2015, this pub reopened on 16th January 2018 as the Coach with its Taylor Walker/Cannon Brewery sign frame retained.

https://londonwiki.co.uk/LondonPubs/Clerkenwell/CoachHorses.shtml

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People sometimes ask me how I determine the viewpoint in my sketches. Often, as here, it is determined by practical rather than artistic considerations. I need somewhere to sketch, out of the way, not in the road, and with a clear view. I don’t carry a seat, though sometimes I wish that I did. But here, like a miracle, a seat presented itself.

This perhaps had been a phone junction box, but no more. Now it was a seat. I commandeered it.

I did the pen-and-ink on location and then added the colour back at my desk.

The colours here are:

• Fired Gold Ochre for the bricks
• Ultramarine Blue plus Phthalo Blue Turquoise for the sky
• All greys and blacks are Burnt Umber with the blues
• There’s a bit of Mars Yellow in some of the brickwork and the pillars.

All watercolours from Daniel Smith.

Here are maps to show where it is. It looks like a great pub, with a serious gastronomy menu. https://thecoachclerkenwell.co.uk/

Click here to see more pubs that I’ve drawn.